The Liberia Agriculture Commodity Regulatory Authority (LACRA), in its capacity as Chairman of the National Agriculture Traceability Steering Committee, has announced the convening of a major national stakeholders’ session scheduled for Thursday, 4 June 2026, at a local hotel in Congo Town.
The session will bring together senior representatives of the Government of Liberia, the National Legislature, development partners, international organizations, and the private sector to advance an urgent national agenda: achieving compliance with the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) before the hard deadline of 31 December 2026.
The session represents one of the most consequential gatherings in Liberia’s recent agricultural history-a critical opportunity for the nation’s key institutions to move beyond discussion and commit to the concrete, coordinated actions needed to protect Liberia’s access to European commodity markets and safeguard the livelihoods of tens of thousands of smallholder farming families.
The event is aimed at uniting government, legislature, development partners, and private sector around a national plan to protect Liberia’s agricultural exports by December 31, 2026. Enacted in 2023, the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EU Regulation 2023/1115) is one of the most far-reaching trade and environmental laws in recent history.
It prohibits the placement of certain agricultural commodities on the EU market unless operators can demonstrate, through verifiable due diligence and geolocated data, that those commodities were produced on land that has not been subject to deforestation or forest degradation after 31 December 2020.
For Liberia, the stakes are enormous. Cocoa, coffee, and rubber — three of Liberia’s most important agricultural export commodities — are explicitly covered by the EUDR. The European Union is Liberia’s primary destination for these exports, and non-compliance with the regulation would effectively close that market to Liberian producers.
The consequences of failing to meet the EUDR deadline would be swift and severe: loss of EU market access for cocoa, coffee, and rubber; a sharp decline in incomes for smallholder farmers who depend on these crops; reduced national foreign exchange earnings; contraction of the agricultural sector; and reputational damage to Liberia’s standing as a responsible forest and agriculture governance actor on the international stage.
“The EUDR is not a distant regulatory concern. It is a present and urgent national challenge. Every day we do not act, we lose ground. LACRA is determined to ensure that Liberia meets this deadline, and this session is the moment we move from planning to action,” Dan T. Saryee, Sr., Acting Director General of LACRA, revealed.
At the centre of Liberia’s response is the National Agriculture Traceability System (NATS)-a comprehensive digital and institutional framework designed to register farmers, geolocate agricultural plots, document deforestation-free land use, and generate the supply-chain due diligence documentation required for EUDR compliance. Building this system requires resources, expertise, political will, and the active cooperation of every institution represented at the 4 June session.
The National Agriculture Traceability Steering Committee (NATSC) was established under the chairmanship of LACRA as the central multi-stakeholder governance body responsible for steering Liberia’s national response to the EUDR. The Committee has already convened twice- in 2025 and in January 2026, and has built significant momentum in terms of institutional alignment, technical scoping, and roadmap development.
The June 4 session marks a pivotal escalation of the Committee’s work. Rather than a routine committee meeting, it is designed as a high-level national mobilization session-an occasion for stakeholders to make public, documented commitments to the actions, resources, and cooperation needed to drive EUDR compliance across all relevant sectors of government and the economy.
The Steering Committee brings together all institutions with a direct role in agriculture, land, forestry, environment, data, and rural development under a single coordinated structure. LACRA chairs the Committee and serves as its Secretariat, coordinating the work of the following member institutions:
The National Agriculture Traceability Steering Committee members include the Liberia Agriculture Commodity Regulatory Authority (LACRA)-Chair, Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), Forestry Development Authority (FDA), Cooperative Development Agency (CDA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Liberia Land Authority (LLA), and Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geo-Information Services (LISGIS).
Others are the Food System, Land Use and Restoration (FOLAR), Rubber Development Fund Incorporated (RDFI), Rubber Planters Association of Liberia (RPAL), Ministry of Finance and Development Planning (MFDP), National Rubber Broker & Farmers Union of Liberia (NRBFUL), House of Representatives Agriculture Committee Chair, Senate Agriculture Committee Chair and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
The June 4 National Stakeholders’ Session is designed to achieve several concrete outcomes that will directly accelerate Liberia’s path to EUDR compliance. It is not a ceremonial gathering. It is a working session with a clear mandate and measurable deliverables.
Chief among its objectives is the adoption of the Monrovia Resolution-a landmark multi-stakeholder declaration that will commit all participating institutions to specific strategies and actions in the following areas, engaging internationally accredited technical institutions with proven expertise in building national agricultural traceability systems, to lead the design and deployment of Liberia’s NATS under the oversight of LACRA; launching a coordinated fundraising strategy to mobilize public and private resources, bilateral and multilateral donor funding, and private sector contributions into a dedicated EUDR Compliance Fund; formally committing all Steering Committee member institutions to structured inter-agency cooperation, data sharing, and joint implementation activities through signed Memoranda of Understanding.
Others are, launching a National EUDR Awareness and Farmer Preparedness Campaign to inform, educate, and mobilize Liberia’s cocoa, coffee, and rubber farming communities in all counties; calling for the highest levels of political will including a Presidential Directive mandating full government cooperation and sustaining active diplomatic engagement with the European Union; establishing an accountability framework with bi-monthly institutional progress reporting and quarterly public compliance status updates.
“This is the session where Liberia decides. The EUDR compliance window is closing. We are calling on every stakeholder-government, lawmakers, development partners, private sector — to come on June 4 ready to commit, ready to act, and ready to be held accountable,” Dan T. Saryee, Sr., Acting Director General of LACRA, noted.
The Liberia Agriculture Commodity Regulatory Authority (LACRA) is the principal government agency responsible for the regulation, standardization, and development of agricultural commodities in Liberia. Established under the Government of Liberia, LACRA oversees the quality, certification, and trade compliance of key export commodities, including cocoa, coffee, and rubber. In its role as Chairman of the National Agriculture Traceability Steering Committee, LACRA leads Liberia’s national response to the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and the development of the National Agriculture Traceability System (NATS).
